A Bayesian approach for assessing the boundary between desirable and undesirable environmental status – An example from a coastal fish indicator in the Baltic Sea

Laurila-Pant, Mirka; Mäntyniemi, Samu; Östman, Örjan; Olsson, Jens; Uusitalo, Laura; Lehikoinen, Annukka

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106975

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The EQA framework has been specially designed to support and facilitate such reporting of the quality of ecosystems at the frontier of conservation and science in the different fields of ecology. Other approaches exist for that purpose, but they often require long time series and a vast amount of data (Laurila‐Pant et al, 2021; Östman et al, 2020). EQA, although remaining data demanding, seems more flexible and is also developed for multivariate data environments, while existing approaches are mostly univariate so that they ignore a large part of the potential response of the ecosystem to anthropogenic source pressures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological quality assessment: A framework to report ecosystems quality and their dynamics from reference conditions

Sturbois,

De Cáceres,

Bifolchi

et al. 2023

Ecosphere

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Worldwide, ecosystems are suffering important taxonomic and functional modifications in response to anthropogenic disturbances, operating at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Awareness on biodiversity losses has led to the adoption of conservation policies and the development of programs devoted to the conservation and the restoration of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. The assessment of the ecological health of ecosystems requires measuring and characterizing restoration or degradation dynamics and their consequences on the ecological quality with respect to reference conditions defined pragmatically as conservation targets. Methodological innovations, in terms of data collection, analysis, and visualization, have an important influence on the ability of ecologists to understand biodiversity changes. The assessment of the quality of ecosystems with respect to reference conditions requires to address, notably, three main challenges: the definition of reference conditions, the assessment of the degree of achievement of conservation objectives, and the qualitative and quantitative characterization of recovering and departing patterns. We propose here the ecological quality assessment (EQA) framework as a data‐driven approach to track ecological quality focusing on the distance of the tested stations with respect to a chosen reference envelope using fuzzy logic and trajectory analysis. We take advantage of those analytical tools to propose a general and flexible multivariate framework by quantifying the achievement of reference conditions, measuring restoration and degradation dynamics when temporal series are available, and representing and synthesizing this information. To take into account the natural spatiotemporal variability of sites considered as reference, we gave two variants to our framework: a state‐based variant when no temporal replications are available and a trajectory‐based variant specially devoted to compare whole trajectories to a trajectory reference envelope defined by a set of reference trajectories. These two complementary approaches were illustrated through two terrestrial and marine ecological applications using the R package “ecotraj” in order to evidence ecological observations that meet conservation objectives from those that do not meet them. EQA constitutes a flexible framework for the assessment and reporting of ecosystem quality, including restoration and degradation dynamics adaptable to multiple questions in the different fields of ecology and conservation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological quality assessment: A framework to report ecosystems quality and their dynamics from reference conditions

Sturbois,

De Cáceres,

Bifolchi

et al. 2023

Ecosphere

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show abstract

“…Application of ecological indictors for assessing the environmental status of ecosystems is important to provide guidance for effective management (Bergström et al, 2016b;Muñoz-Colmenares et al, 2021;Shin and Shannon, 2010;Östman et al, 2020). Biological indicators, however, may respond to variation in a wide range of abiotic and biotic environmental variables besides the anthropogenic pressures of primary interest for management (Asmamaw et al, 2021;Bergström et al, 2016a;Borja et al, 2010;Hao et al, 2021;Laurila-Pant et al, 2021;Östman et al, 2017a). Hence, natural variability may limit the indicators' ability to provide confident results and prevent accurate assessments and thereby influence management action (Bergström et al, 2016a;Bergström et al, 2016b;Östman et al, 2017a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving assessments of coastal ecosystems – Adjusting coastal fish indicators to variation in ambient environmental factors

Naddafi

Östman²,

Bergström³

et al. 2022

Ecological Indicators

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A Bayesian approach for assessing the boundary between desirable and undesirable environmental status – An example from a coastal fish indicator in the Baltic Sea

Cited by 2 publications

References 56 publications

Ecological quality assessment: A framework to report ecosystems quality and their dynamics from reference conditions

Ecological quality assessment: A framework to report ecosystems quality and their dynamics from reference conditions

Improving assessments of coastal ecosystems – Adjusting coastal fish indicators to variation in ambient environmental factors

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